Tag: psychology

Motherhood

Lockdown Day 22: The Bittersweet.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Lockdown Day 22: The Bittersweet.

My attempts were futile. No matter how many times I put the canopy over his head and tried to explain how it would keep him dry, he pushed it off gleefully to feel the rain falling on his head. Soon, he also felt the rain pouring on his feet, as he quickly clawed off his shoes and socks. This was moments after he realized, 10 minutes into our walk, that his father had not come with us. “Where Daddy go?” he inquired over and over again, frantically looking for my husband. “He didn’t come with us,” I attempted to explain to my 20 month old socially isolated son, who, after five minutes of repeating “where daddy go” finally got the memo and replaced his “where daddy go” chant with repeating, in the most adorably sad voice, “bye bye dada. Bye bye dada. Bye bye dada.”

The good thing about it being under 50 degrees and pouring on day 22 of lockdown is that no one in their right mind was outside, at least in our little apartment complex. Being so close to our front door, I opted to let my son–already soaking wet–run through puddles barefoot. This is what childhood is all about… except usually it’s with other kids. But my son, who doesn’t understand why “boppa” and “grandma” can no longer visit, who screams into my phone “call friend” so he can see another kid around his age who makes funny faces at him virtually, seems mostly ok with this whole lockdown thing. He might not realize he traded in friend and grandparents for more momma time, but I can tell he likes that I’m home.

But the days of working from home have turned into one big blur. I made a commitment to myself yesterday that everyday at lunchtime I would eat a super quick lunch, then take my son out for a short walk. It was definitely the perfect day to commit that to myself in an area that typically has nice weather, the day before it was 48 degrees mid day and pouring rain.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the weather (what’s a little rain?) and I asked my husband to get my son ready for a quick walk so we could get some fresh air. My son was already enthusiastically shouting “need go home a park go home*” (“go home” means “go out” to my son) when I opened the door and noticed the little rain was actually quite a lot of rain. I grabbed an umbrella, threw on a hoodie, and figured the rain would keep us safer. One might say my son could catch a cold from being out in the rain and getting all wet, but–he won’t catch coronavirus.

After I quickly lost the battle of “keep the canopy down so you don’t get soaked,” I watched my son sit up in his stroller, uncovered, staring in awe at the rain, the heavy grey sky, and the sopping wet verdancy around him as he reached out with delight to brush against the soaking leaves–leaves only slightly less soaking than his outgrown brunette hair and fuzzy Elmo hoodie. Given he couldn’t get much wetter, I opted to take him out of his stroller to roam free. I questioned whether I was being a bad mother for letting my son run shoeless through puddles in cold-for-California weather, but I made the call to not care either way–he was having fun, and fun comes in short supply these day. Splash splash splash, he stomped, from one puddle to the next. I let him wander freely with the exception of keeping him far away from the postman and the construction worker who were having a socially-distanced chat by the mailboxes.

We weren’t outside for long. We headed back to our apartment to get warm and share all of our adventures with “dada.” I went back to my bedroom to resume work and prep for a call, and my son went back to the other room to watch too much Sesame Street. As I curled up in my bed and got back to work, I felt the same unsettling mix of deep existential sadness swimming through my veins in tandem with a tinge of peaceful delight that I’ve felt for days now. The deep pit of guilt for feeling anything positive in any of this, with so many suffering, and yet, finding so much of “this” is making me happier than I’ve been in a long time. The long focused periods of work where I can perform my best and not be distracted by severe anxiety. The getting to see my son for a few minutes on breaks and give him a quick hug or see the newest thing he has learned (or visit, after finishing one big project for the day, when I heard him giving dada a credit card and telling him that he wanted to “buy a mommy.”) The eating small portions when I’m hungry versus stuffing my face all day long with too much food. The being home and fully present when I’m done with work versus having to drive 45 minutes in traffic and arriving home too exhausted to do much with my family other than sit on the couch and survive social interaction before it’s time to go to sleep. Getting to see my son go down for his nap in my husband’s arms. Doing what’s best for my mental health and my professional productivity. Living a life that feels like I have a life… I mean, one where I can’t see other people outside of my family and where I’m constantly worried about my loved ones getting sick and dying… but a life nonetheless.

This weekend, as I roasted onions and garlic for fresh red pepper tomato sauce I was attempting to make for the pasta my husband found at the supermarket last week, I stood in the kitchen and let the thick, blood red aroma fill me. I reveled in the suspense of potentially cooking something edible, and the likelihood of it being barely that. Ultimately, the pasta was undercooked and the sauce too bitter, but that didn’t matter. I found joy in the process of making it. In the process of doing something just to try it out. Anything not entirely burnt was preemptively deemed a success by yours truly. And as I ate my pasta too-al-dente with sauce surprisingly flavorless and thin, I grew excited about what I could do next time to experiment and make it better. Because now, for the first time in years, I have the time to just be present in the world where the future is so uncontrollable I’m forced into sweetly hovering in the present. My anxiety still stabs my heart and takes my breath away at times, but lesser and lesser each day this lockdown wears on. I connect with a few friends and family members here and there, in text messages and on zoom virtual happy hours, but my contentment seems more to do with the semi-solitude that social isolation forces (and enforces.) It feels as if my little family of three is floating out amongst the stars, light years away from other sentient creatures, despite radio contacting others for comfort here and there. And there, amidst those stars, I finally am getting a taste of what happiness can be, and it tastes far better than my pasta sauce, though perhaps equally bittersweet.

Politics, Etc.

It’s all going to be ok. Right?

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on It’s all going to be ok. Right?

People who do not have anxiety disorders may understand a smidgen of similar panic these days—that deep sense of dread that no matter how hard you try and plan you just are not in control of anything in this rabid little big giant world of ours.

I know I ought to stop reading the news, devouring every qualitative and quantitative data point about this virus. I hadn’t spent a single minute becoming the world’s expert on the flu or other causes of death at scale so why do I find it so impossible to look away from the many articles about infection spreading across the world?

Maybe it’s the tightness in my chest that hasn’t fully dissipated for two weeks despite a full course of strong antibiotics. Maybe it’s knowing that many of my loved ones—my mother, in-laws, and grandmother—are in the at risk category which means things could get very scary if any of them got infected. Given worst-case projections that 75% of us many get sick it’s hard to not worry.

There is also a chance this will all blow over fairly quickly. Maybe the rates of death are much lower here than they have been in other countries. Maybe medicine will soon keep the worst of the disease at bay. It doesn’t help much to be a pessimist, though I wonder how much it helps to be a realist in this situation. I mean, it is important to take necessary precautions and isolate, but beyond that what can we do? How panicked do we want to be?

I don’t understand those who don’t feel the heavy weight of anxiety right now, but I envy them. Those who are in the what will be will be camp seem to accept this may get pretty ugly, but they aren’t particularly worried about it. Then there is the camp that thinks the entire situation is being hypersensationalized. That the media is playing up our fears when the data is not yet available to get an accurate analysis on what is really going on. That this is all not worth shutting down our economy over, despite acknowledging that some people will die from this who weren’t otherwise ready to meet their proverbial maker.

But it’s challenging to pretend everything is business as usual when it so clearly isn’t. Ignore the news—fine. Don’t engage in conversation and social media chatter about hospitals becoming overwhelmed and people of all ages becoming critically ill and unable to breathe. Got it. I just don’t know how to tune out how dramatically life has changed, in an instant. How we can no longer see our friends, or anyone really. We go for walks and sprint to the other side of the street when anyone heads our direction. We do not have a moment to look a stranger in the eye and exchange a friendly silent hello or an awkward accidental glance in anyone’s direction.

Two weeks of this is certainly survivable. It may be longer than that. How long? So many think it won’t be long at all. It doesn’t make sense for this to be a month or two and then we return to normal. To defeat this thing it seems we must accept it will seriously disrupt our lives for quite some time. Months? Years? Certainly not weeks.

There are positives to the isolation as well. It forces us to return to simplicity, in solitude or with our close family. We cannot go out to be entertained, we must entertain ourselves (or at least cozy up on the couch while watching Netflix.) It provides pause to a modern life that sprints ahead with no retrieve, and gives us the opportunity to think, create, and, if we can quiet our minds enough, sleep. So I’m trying, I’m really trying, to focus on the positive and not expect the worst. The focus is to keep loved ones safe, keep ourselves safe, and take everything one day at a time.

Isn’t that what the non anxious folks do?

Mental Health

Restraint.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Restraint.

Inside our skulls we are wired for pleasure. Robotically we seek out these highs which do their best to ensure both our survival and the survival of our species.

But, what if we can actively retrain our minds to no longer seek pleasure?

This is a central theme to my 2020 and my immediate consolidation of all of my resolutions—pleasure, in its simplest form (all and any comparable to ingesting refined sugar) is hereby and as of 1/1/20 banned from my existence. Dopamine and serotonin will no longer control me. I will have as much free will as a human can have, and that starts by releasing oneself from the chemical desire for a momentary high of any sort.

Some who I have shared this idea with have said this seems unhealthy (everything in moderation my dear) but as I’ve learned with intermittent fasting and a strict 1400 calorie diet with 1-2 high calorie days a week followed by a restricted 500 calorie day, I have the ability to retrain my mind (and quickly) to no longer seek the quick and empty pleasure of a morning muffin or secretly eating a dozen candy bars because they simply exist.

In removing simple pleasure, all that refined sugar, from my existence, I can retrain myself to experience pleasure from subtlety and perhaps heal my addiction to it and replace it with something far more productive and positive.

For example, when you stop eating refined sugar, the natural sweetness of vegetables is much more noticeable on the tongue. We need to eat but we do not need ice cream or chocolate bars or muffins to survive. And, by removing quick highs from our palate, we can eventually taste so much more.

I am applying this to my entire life this year. Yes, it is a drastic shift, but it is much needed. This will help me stabilize this year, simplify and repattern my values. Pleasure is a vice and one worth experiencing but not necessary to repeat or desire. It sounds very Buddhist of me, I guess, but I’m not here to be one with the world. I’m here to teach my mind and the chemicals therein that they do not own my actions. They’ve had 36 years to prove themselves worthy of this power and have only led me into the darkness. In taking away that power, I am here, ready to lead myself into the light.

Mental Health

Undoing.

by Life With InterestLeave a Comment on Undoing.

Where I am right now, finally, I guess, is willing to accept that childhood trauma can and does impact the brain in ways that are chemical and physical. I’m talking to a new online therapist who has a history working with those who have far worse trauma then I’ve ever experienced, I find she immediately understands why I think the way I think, and it’s refreshing to not be fed the same basic CBT lines without a solid understanding of the way I react so sensitively to everything and why.

Maybe it’s not bipolar. That’s a self diagnosis that could be wrong. I’m just looking for something to explain this energy and all of my mistakes, and specifically how there are months where I am clearly depressed and others where I feel like I can take on the world’s biggest challenges and solve them by being so raw and real that people will be inspired and turn to exploring their own psyches and find out that we are all pretty much the same in our bitter-beautiful mortality.

And yet.

There is a problem with how I am. A problem not with who I am but the consequence of it. I am, apparently, an adrenaline addict, which is a thing childhood trauma and PTSD can do to a brain. I’ve been using the word “addict” a lot to describe my challenges so it makes sense.

In my preliminary reading on the subject matter — attachment disorder with adrenaline addiction — I feel myself nodding as I read the content. Basically stable life is boring and I crave chaos. I create chaos. Others do not understand this. I don’t really want chaos but it is an addiction. It is that self sabotage that happens over and over again because I’m way more comfortable with turbulence than smooth skies.

This is something, I’ve read, that is etched into my mind, but that can be mostly unwired. I hope that’s true. Because the gist of it is that the things that today have the potential to make me “happy” are the same things that trigger my next demise.

I’m told I should go jump out of airplanes to fill this need for adrenaline, but I’m not the skydiving type. But one can also do things like performing or running (30 seconds beyond feeling like you can’t run anymore) to get that dopamine in healthy ways. That makes sense—I’m happiest when I am regularly exercising because I’m burning through some of the addiction cravings temporarily. Once my back issues are resolved I’ll be making exercise a priority. I already planned to in 2020 but now it’s part of my treatment plan.

I really wish I could know what it’s like to live without any history of trauma, and can only imagine how hard it is for others who experienced far worse. I feel like somewhere in all of this there is a guidance to my future career as a therapist/author, maybe, helping others with similar pasts and making sure they understand that their brains have been altered from a young age, they are not crazy, they are just addicted to things that are not healthy in that they impact the chance to be truly happy and stable, if that’s what they want.

In the meantime, this adrenaline junkie has to stop with the involuntary self destruction and find motivation to strive for the status quo. I think my new online therapist will help me with tactics that work for PTSD which will hopefully alleviate my cravings for the ugly high of self combustion.

And, I think it is fall-winter too, that triggers the worst of it. Historically so. The fall winter turbulence followed by deep winter depression and by spring I’m ready to pick up the pieces but it’s far too late. Maybe because it’s my birthday and every year I got older the expectations to fit into this idea of the perfect little girl grew exponentially. All I remember from childhood outside of feeling like an outsider, longing to be accepted by others, is getting into trouble, being whipped, and apologizing for being a horrible, broken person. I’m pretty sure that isn’t everyone’s childhood experience.

And I relate only to those with similar childhoods, it seems—the high functioning of us, anyway. Those of us who rebelled against it. Because we want more than this and yet we aren’t sure if happiness is actually achievable in a state of stability. We have the choice between medicating away the highs that drive us (to both the good and the bad) and experiencing the flatline of emotions, or we try to get a handle on the madness etched into our minds with every gaslight comment, every burning snap of the belt against our flesh, every moment that took away our confidence and our understanding of who we truly are or how to make that person happy.

I guess it starts with accepting that SHE (he) deserves to BE happy. Not in an epic, adrenaline-inducing, self destructive sort of way, but in a calm filled with gratitude and acceptance that transcends the day and becomes a natural part of being way. There is a path to recovery and I’m going to find it. I will undo the toxic mind and somehow give birth to a woman who respects herself and believes she is worthy of her own happiness. And, that, ideally, happiness need not be synonymous with emptiness and instead actually, somehow, feel good.